Professional Continuous Glucose Monitoring at the Parkland Diabetes Clinic

The purpose of this study is to assess whether the short-term use of professional continuous glucose monitoring (Pro-CGM) at the Parkland Diabetes Clinic in selected patients with poorly-controlled diabetes due to hyper- and/or hypoglycemia leads to improvements in patients' glycemic control within 3-6 months, subjective understanding of how food, activity, and medications affect blood sugar levels, and diabetes self-care practices. The study will be a prospective cohort study that assesses patients glycemic control and diabetes self-care practices before and 3-6 months after utilization of a Pro-CGM for 10 days. Glycemic control and diabetes self-care practices will be assessed based on hemoglobin A1c measurements and glucose data download from glucometer and Pro-CGM. A short survey will be administered at the end of the 10 days Pro-CGM use to assess whether the Pro-CGM use had a positive impact on patients' understanding of how different activities affect their blood sugar and diabetes self-care practices.

Parkland Diabetes Clinic serves an ethnically diverse, low socioeconomic patient population, the majority of whom do not have access to diabetes technology like continuous glucose monitoring. CGM measures sugar levels every 5 to 15 minutes and have been shown in clinical studies to improve glycemic control. Establishing a professional CGM program at the clinic will provide short-term access to this technology. One of the main reason for conducting this study is to determine if Pro-CGM would be a useful intervention to integrate into the clinic's routine practice in the future.